Research project: Eye movements in special populations

Currently Active:

Yes

In everyday life the default strategy to sample the visual environment is to move our eyes in fast ballistic movements (saccades) interspersed with periods where the eye remains still (fixations). This is known as saccadic orienting, and its purpose is to re-position the high acuity area of the retina, the fovea, so that detailed inspection can be carried out at the point of fixation. This work investigates eye movements in 'normal' and 'special' participants in an aim to understand how intact, and defective saccadic orienting impacts upon the ability to sample and perceive the 'world'.

Project Overview

Patterns of saccades and fixations can reflect which features of a display drive the sequence of eye movements for a given task, i.e. visual search tasks, reading, scene perception. Analysis of eye movements allows us to learn about the influence of different types of visual stimuli, on visual and cognitive processing in normal and special populations. The following topics are currently being investigated by our group: